DM and/or player?

[Corjay]

I suspect that the demographic on RPG websites will not accurately reflect the demographics of RPG players. RPG boards are generally more GM-centric for reasons that GM's seek out information and tend toward bigger egoes. Players have little need to seek out information and are going to be more frequently content, not to mention that a large slice of non-GMers are wives and children, both of which tend not to be as big at visiting forums. Those that do will visit more rarely and not be as interested in staying online long enough to read through the forum list.

What I think you'll find is around 60% claiming to do more GM'ing, which is impossible to fit into the actual demographic. That would mean that more than one GM is gm'ing most games. But, of course, that's just a speculation. We can only see what the results will end up in.

 

[Corjay]

P.S. I wrote that last post before I voted, before I saw the results, and before I saw Mercurius's post.

 

[Mercurius]

P.S. I wrote that last post before I voted, before I saw the results, and before I saw Mercurius's post.

That teaches you to post before you read .

Anyways, yeah, my expectation is that most here are primarily GMs (through 46 votes your 60% was dead-on...good job). If you think that for every one GM there are an average of, say, 3.5 players, then primary GMs would make up 20-30% of the gamer population, rather than the 60% we see on EN World, or 85% if you count half-time or more. But again, it is too early to "call it" (I obviously watched too many primaries on MSNBC).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Up till now, I've mostly played, only DMing single sessions or in some cases a series of sessions to do one adventure, longest so far taking four sessions to complete. I had a plan to do a massive, 6-8 session side quest to flesh out my PC's background and have some really intense fights, but I left that particular gaming group before it could happen.

Currently I'm trying to get a small online group started with my close friends in which it'd be rotating DM, with me as the main, but thus far it's not working out cause we're each fairly busy, and at all different times of the day.

I've found I can only DM for certain people who know me well, and don't mind the high powered meat grinder dungeons I prefer. The group I'm playing in right now nearly fell apart after I made my first stint as guest DM, because they typically have fairly light fights and the DM plays with kiddie gloves (like blatantly rerolling for the bad guys when the party's losing, on multiple occasions). Then I came in and tossed a bunch of ToB crazy ninja guys at them and...OUTRAGE! ^_^

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Right now I'm DMing and playing on a 50/50 split - DMing one week and playing the next.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I mostly DM but occasionally play. Dammit!

No, no, I'm not actually going to rant (what would be the point - they still wouldn't get off their asses and DM. . . grumble grumble). The 'rant' smiley is quite sufficient.

 

[FireLance]

I know this poll is young, but maybe we should start calling this place DM World?

Only on a HAL computer.

 

[meomwt]

I've been the primary DM for our group for a while. I've run one long 3.5 game and one which died after about 17 sessions due to player compatability problems.

Now we have the following situation: we have a weekly Wednesday night game, I'm primary DM for that (War of the Burning Sky). There's an irregular M&M game another guy DM's (not brilliantly, it has to be said). And today, we start a fortnightly game with a different group where it is planned that the DM'ing duties will rotate between myself and two other experienced DM's every 6-8 sessions.

I think I still DM more than I play, therefore

 

[Mercurius]

So 85 votes in and the same ratio is holding: 61% who primarily DM, 85% who DM at least half the time.

 

[Henrix]

I mostly DM, and like it better than playing, but over the years I've noticed that I get burned out if I don't get to play once in a while!